世紀文學經典:《百年孤獨》第15章Part3

The nun lunched at the house while she waited for the train back, and in accordance with the discretion they asked of her, she did not mention the child again, but Fernanda viewed her as an undesirable witness of her shame and lamented the fact that they had abandoned the medieval custom of hanging a messenger who bore bad news. It was then that she decided to drown the child in the cistern as soon as the nun left, but her heart was not strong enough and she preferred to wait patiently until the infinite goodness of God would free her from the annoyance.
The new Aureliano was a year old when the tension of the people broke with no forewarning. Jos?Arcadio Segundo and other union leaders who had remained underground until then suddenly appeared one weekend and organized demonstrations in towns throughout the banana region. The police merely maintained public order. But on Monday night the leaders were taken from their homes and sent to jail in the capital of the province with two-pound irons on their legs. Taken among them were Jos?Arcadio Segundo and Lorenzo Gavilán, a colonel in the Mexican revolution, exiled in Macondo, who said that he had been witness to the heroism of his comrade Artemio Cruz. They were set free, however, within three months because of the fact that the government and the banana company could not reach an agreement as to who should feed them in jail. The protests of the workers this time were based on the lack of sanitary facilities in their living quarters, the nonexistence of medical services, and terrible working conditions. They stated, furthermore, that they were not being paid in real money but in scrip, which was good only to buy Virginia ham in the company commissaries. Jos?Arcadio Segundo was put in jail because he revealed that the scrip system was a way for the company to finance its fruit ships; which without the commissary merchandise would have to return empty from New Orleans to the banana ports. The other complaints were common knowledge. The company physicians did not examine the sick but had them line up behind one another in the dispensaries and a nurse would put a pill the color of copper sulfate on their tongues, whether they had malaria, gonorrhea, or constipation. It was a cure that was so common that children would stand in line several times and instead of swallowing the pills would take them home to use as bingo markers. The company workers were crowded together in miserable barracks. The engineers, instead of putting in toilets, had a portable latrine for every fifty people brought to the camps at Christmas time and they held public demonstrations of how to use them so that they would last longer. The decrepit lawyers dressed in black who during other times had besieged Colonel Aureliano Buendía and who now were controlled by the banana company dismissed those demands with decisions that seemed like acts of magic. When the workers drew up a list of unanimous petitions, a long time passed before they were able to notify the banana company officially. As soon as he found out about the agreement Mr. Brown hitched his luxurious glassed-in coach to the train and disappeared from Macondo along with the more prominent representatives of his company. Nonetheless some workers found one of them the following Saturday in a brothel and they made him sign a copy of the sheet with the demands while he was naked with the women who had helped to entrap him. The mournful lawyers showed in court that that man had nothing to do with the company and in order that no one doubt their arguments they had him jailed as an impostor. Later on,Mr. Brown was surprised traveling incognito, in a third-class coach and they made him sign another copy of the demands. On the following day he appeared before the judges with his hair dyed black and speaking flawless Spanish. The lawyers showed that the man was not Mr. Jack Brown, the superintendent of the banana company, born in Prattville Alabama, but a harmless vendor of medicinal plants, born in Macondo and baptized there with the name of Dagoberto Fonseca. A while later, faced with a new attempt by the workers the lawyers publicly exhibited Mr. Brown’s death certificate, attested to by consuls and foreign ministers which bore witness that on June ninth last he had been run over by a fire engine in Chicago. Tired of that hermeneutical delirium, the workers turned away from the authorities in Macondo and brought their complaints up to the higher courts. It was there that the sleight-of-hand lawyers proved that the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis. So that the fable of the Virginia ham was nonsense, the same as that of the miraculous pills and the Yuletide toilets, and by a decision of the court it was established and set down in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist.
The great strike broke out. Cultivation stopped halfway, the fruit rotted on the trees and the hundred-twenty-car trains remained on the sidings. The idle workers overflowed the towns. The Street of the Turks echoed with a Saturday that lasted for several days and in the poolroom at the Hotel Jacob they had to arrange twenty-four-hour shifts. That was where Jos?Arcadio Segundo was on the day it was announced that the army had been assigned to reestablish public order. Although he was not a man given to omens, the news was like an announcement of death that he had been waiting for ever since that distant morning when Colonel Gerineldo Márquez had let him see an execution. The bad omen did not change his solemnity, however. He took the shot he had planned and it was good. A short time later the drumbeats, the shrill of the bugle, the shouting and running of the people told him that not only had the game of pool come to an end, but also the silent and solitary game that he had been playing with himself ever since that dawn execution. Then he went out into the street and saw them. There were three regiments, whose march in time to a galley drum made the earth tremble. Their snorting of a many-headed dragon filled the glow of noon with a pestilential vapor. They were short, stocky, and brutelike. They perspired with the sweat of a horse and had a smell of suntanned hide and the taciturn and impenetrable perseverance of men from the uplands. Although it took them over an hour to pass by, one might have thought that they were only a few squads marching in a circle, because they were all identical, sons of the same bitch, and with the same stolidity they all bore the weight of their packs and canteens, the shame of their rifles with fixed bayonets, and the chancre of blind obedience and a sense of honor. ?rsula heard them pass from her bed in the shadows and she made a crow with her fingers. Santa Sofía de la Piedad existed for an instant, leaning over the embroidered tablecloth that she had just ironed, and she thought of her son, Jos?Arcadio Segundo, who without changing expression watched the last soldiers pass by the door of the Hotel Jacob.

爲了等候返回的列車，修女留在布恩蒂亞家中吃午飯，並且根據修道院裏的囑咐，再也沒有提孩子的事，可是菲蘭達把她看做是不受歡迎的醜事見證人，就抱怨中世紀的風俗已經過時了，按照那種風俗是要把傳遞壞消息的人吊死的。於是菲蘭達拿定主意，只要修女一走，就把嬰兒淹死在水池裏，但她沒有這種勇氣，只好耐心等待仁慈的上帝讓她擺脫這個累贅。
新生的奧雷連諾。 布恩蒂亞滿週歲的時候，馬孔多突然又出現了緊張的空氣。霍。 阿卡蒂奧第二和其他的工會頭頭是一直處於地下狀態的，週末忽然到了鎮上，並且在香蕉地區的城鎮裏組織示威遊行。警察只是維持社會秩序。然而，星期一夜間，一夥士兵把工會頭頭們從牀上拖了起來，給他們戴上五公斤重的腳鐐，投進了省城的監獄。被捕的還有霍·阿卡蒂奧第二和洛倫索。 加維蘭上校；這個上校參加過墨西哥的革命，流亡到了馬孔多，說他目睹過他的朋友阿特米奧·克魯斯的英雄壯舉。可是不過三個月，他們就獲釋了。因爲誰該支付犯人的伙食費，政府和香蕉公司未能達成協議。食品質量惡劣和勞動條件不好又引起了不滿的浪潮。此外，工人們抱怨說，他們領到的布是真正的錢，而是臨時購貨券，只能在香蕉公司的商店裏購買弗吉尼亞（注：美國地名）火腿。霍。 阿卡蒂奧第二關進監獄，正是因爲他揭露了臨時購貨券制度，說它是香蕉公司爲水果船籌措資金的辦法，如果沒有商店的買賣，水果船就會空空如也地從新奧爾良回到香蕉港。工人們其餘的要求是有關生活條件和醫務工作的。公司的醫生們不給病人診斷，光叫他們在門診所前面排隊，而且護士只給每個病人口裏放一粒硫酸銅顏色的藥丸，不管病人患的是什麼病——瘧疾、淋病或者便祕。還有一種普遍的療法是，孩子們排了幾次隊，醫生們卻不給他們吞藥丸，而把他們帶到自己家裏去當做“賓戈*”賭博的“籌碼”。工人們都極端擁擠地住在快要倒塌的板棚裏，工程師們不給他們修建茅房，而是每逢聖誕節在鎮上安置若干活動廁所，每五十個人使用一個廁所，而且這些工程師還當衆表演如何使用廁所，以使它們壽命長久一些。身穿黑衣服的老朽的律師們，從前曾經圍着奧雷連諾上校打轉，現在卻代表香蕉公司的利益，好象耍魔術一樣巧妙地駁斥了工人們的控訴。工人們擬了一份一致同意的請願書，過了很久官方纔通知香蕉公司。布勞恩先生剛剛聽到請願書的事，立即把玻璃頂棚的華麗車廂掛在列車上，帶着公司中最重要的代表人物悄悄地離開了馬孔多。但在下個星期六，工人們在妓院裏找到了其中一個人物，強迫他在請願書副本上籤了字，這個人物是一個妓女同意把他誘入陷阱的，他還赤身露體地跟這個女人躺在一起就給抓住了。然而氣急敗壞的律師們在法庭上證明，這個人跟香蕉公司毫無關係，爲了不讓任何人懷疑他們的論證，他們要政府把這個人當做騙子關進監獄。隨後，工人們抓到了在三等車廂裏化名旅行的布勞恩先生本人，強迫他在請願書的另一副本上籤了字。第二天，他就把頭髮染黑，出現在法官們面前，說
一口無可指摘的西班牙語。律師們證明，這並不是亞拉巴馬州普拉特維爾城出生的傑克·布勞恩先生——香蕉公司總經理，而是馬孔多出生的、無辜的藥材商人，名叫達戈貝託·馮塞卡。嗣後，工人們又想去抓布勞恩先生的時候，律師們在各個公共場所張貼了他的死亡證明書，證明書是由駐外使館領事和參贊簽字的，證明六月九號傑克·布勞恩先生在芝加哥被救火車軋死了。工人們厭惡這種詭辯的胡言，就不理會地方政權，向上級法院提出控訴。可是那裏的法學魔術師證明，工人的要求是完全非法的，香蕉公司沒有、從來沒有、也決不會有任何正式工人，——公司只是偶爾僱傭他們來做些臨時性的工作。所以，弗吉尼亞火腿，神奇藥丸以及聖誕節廁所都是無稽之談，法院裁定並莊嚴宣佈：根本沒有什麼工人。賓戈，一種賭博，從袋子裏取出標有號碼的牌子，放在手中紙板上的相同號碼上，誰先擺滿紙板號碼，誰就獲勝。
大罷工爆發了。種植園的工作停頓下來，香蕉在樹上爛掉，一百二十節車廂的列車凝然不動地停在鐵道側線上。城鄉到處都是失業工人。土耳其人街上開始了沒完沒了的星期六，在雅各旅館的檯球房裏，球檯旁邊晝夜都擁聚着人，輪流上場玩耍。軍隊奉命恢復社會秩序的消息宣佈那一天，霍。 阿卡蒂奧第二正在臺球房裏。他雖沒有預見才能，但把這個消息看做是死亡的預兆，從格林列爾多·馬克斯上校讓他去看行刑的那個遙遠的早晨起，他就在等候這種死亡。但是，凶兆並沒有使他失去自己固有的堅忍精神。他拿球杆一碰檯球，如願地擊中了兩個球。過了片刻，街上的鼓聲、喇叭聲、叫喊聲和奔跑聲都向他說明，不僅檯球遊戲，而且從那天黎明看了行刑以後自己玩的沉默和孤獨的“遊戲”，全都結束了。於是他走上街頭，便看見了他們。在街上經過的有三個團的士兵，他們在鼓聲下整齊地行進，把大地都震動了。這是明亮的晌午，空氣中充滿了這條多頭巨龍吐出的臭氣。士兵們都很矮壯、粗獷。他們身上發出馬汗氣味和陽光曬軟的揉皮的味兒，在他們身上可以感到山地人默不作聲的，不可戰勝的大無畏精神。儘管他們在霍。 阿。 阿卡蒂奧第二面前走過了整整一個小時，然而可以認爲這不過是幾個班，他們都在兜着圈兒走，他們彼此相似，彷彿是一個母親養的兒子。他們同樣顯得呆頭呆腦，帶着沉重的揹包和水壺，扛着插上刺刀的可恥的步槍，患着盲目服從的淋巴腺鼠疫症，懷着榮譽感。烏蘇娜從晦暗的牀上聽到他們的腳步聲，就舉起雙手合成十字。聖索菲婭·德拉佩德俯身在剛剛熨完的繡花桌布上愣了片刻，想到了自己的兒子霍·阿卡蒂奧第二，而他卻站在雅各旅館門口，不動聲色地望着最後一些士兵走過。